In Staging Politics and Gender , Cecilia Beach examines the political and feminist plays of French playwrights who have largely been overlooked until now. Beach highlights the importance of theatrical endeavors which women perceived as a powerful way to promote political opinions. The author analyzes the work of Louise Michel, Nelly Roussel, Marie Leneru, Vera Starkoff, and Madeline Pelletier and discusses anarchist theatre and forms of social protest theatre at the turn of the century.

The book explores the political forces shaping discourses about identity in Hong Kong and the ways in which identity is constituted within representation as part of an ongoing effort to dramatize an increasingly uncertain present.

Fresh perspectives on political theater and its essential contribution to contemporary culture. Focused studies of individual plays complement broad-based discussions of the place of theater in a radically democratic society. This consistently challenging collection describes the art of change confronting the actual processes of change. 17 photos.

Examining the stage performance of female vocal groups as cultural practices which produced a new pattern in the representation of gender in the light of the socialist identity politics, book offers a multifaced picture of the personal experiences of the socialist gender politics in socialist Serbia.

This beautifully written and well-informed book presents a comprehensive study of Zuni Icosahedron, a Hong Kong avant-garde theatre and dance company, and calls into question the relationship between culture and politics during the last years of British colonial rule. Through both fieldwork and textual analysis, the author explores the double-bind tensions between Chinese and Western aesthetic forms, while examining identity and gender within representation as part of the dramatization of an increasingly uncertain present. Incorporating insights from cultural studies, feminism, anthropology, and queer theory, this imaginative unpacks current debates over Hong Kong identity through the kaleidoscope of avant-garde theatre performances.

One man in his time plays many parts/His acts being seven ages', asserts Shakespeare's Jacques, in a speech which foreshadows what has become a commonplace of contemporary gender theory: that masculinity, far from being a secure, unproblematic gender identity, is a site of crisis and contradictions. Staging Masculinities engages with the complex and paradoxical history of masculinities by exploring the ways in which changing concepts of what it means 'to be a man' have been represented, celebrated, examined and critiqued on mainstream Western - and particularly English - stages. Mapping a history of masculinities onto a history of theatre, Michael Mangan analyses a wide range of plays and performances, from Henry V to Peter Pan, and from medieval liturgical drama to contemporary West-End hits. In the process Mangan offers new and gendered readings of several familiar plays, and traces an intricate relationship between theatrical performance and gender performance.